Original Release: Sega, 2005, Nintendo DS
An extremely basic casino game from Sega that features none of their famous characters or really has any personality whatsoever.
Sega Casino (Nintendo DS, Sega, 2005)
Where to Buy: Amazon / PlayAsia
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
It appears Sega didn’t want to involve Sonic or any of their brands in a gambling game, so this ends up being a very basic and straightforward set of casino games that could have come from any publisher. There are absolutely no elements of Sega to it other than the title.
You start with just five games available, and have to earn your way up through tables with increasingly higher limits at each to eventually unlock some more. Though these just turn out to be keno and a few video poker varieties. It covers most of the absolute basics, but it’s not at all a robust collection of games once all is said and done.
The most interesting bit is a Texas Hold ‘Em table, but the computer AI always plays like nittiest Old Man Coffee that ever existed. No player representations, no bluffing, the CPU only bets big when it has the nuts.
Aesthetically, it’s pretty good if basic. There is no casino experience or adventure/RPG element to this one, it’s basically just a straightforward list of games you move between. The action is accompanied by a nice Leisure Suit Larry-esque loungey tune, but it appears to be the same one for every game.
I suppose the best feature is that multiplayer is available and up to four people can play locally with just one cartridge, but most of the game selection is not suited to take advantage of that feature. Just Texas Hold Em for the most part.
And this was just my informal experience over a few play sessions, but the CPU always seems to run EXTREMELY good at blackjack … like, suspiciously so. It’s a grind to even save-scum your way through this with an emulator as each hand is predetermined before you even place your bet.
A casino game package needs to offer more than just the grind of playing the basic games to build up a virtual loot stack. Minus the thrill of actually winning something real and tangible, this is just a tedious exercise. I really don’t know why Sega bothered with this.
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